


Chaos and Bliss

by zeldadestry



Category: Hellboy (movie-verse)
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-16
Updated: 2008-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:48:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I never," Liz said, talking with her mouth full as she finished off the last bite of a five pound serving of strawberry shortcake, "thought there would be a day when I'd be helping you clean your plate, Red."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos and Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Hellboy 2  
> prompt 76, 'strawberries', for 100_women fanfic challenge

They weren't just protecting the rest of the world anymore. They were protecting their family, providing a safe home for their kids.

"Naula wanted children," Abe said one day as he helped her gather flowers from their garden.

"She told you?"

"She didn't have to speak. She was like I am, remember? When we touched we knew each other, all of each other."

Sometimes she came across Abe reading poetry quietly to himself. Sometimes she took the book from him and tossed it aside, ordering, "No more melancholia!"

"But I have such a talent for it," he would reply.

She wanted to tell him that Naula wouldn't want him to suffer like he did, but she knew it wouldn't make any difference. He knew that, but the loss remained. She loved Abe, not only for being himself, but for being such a good friend to HB. After all, before she believed it, before HB did, Abe had said he'd make a good dad.

 

"I never," Liz said, talking with her mouth full as she finished off the last bite of a five pound serving of strawberry shortcake, "thought there would be a day when I'd be helping you clean your plate, Red."

"You have shown a prodigious increase in appetite," Abe noted.

"I love it," Hellboy said, taking up an after-dinner cigar and patting around in his pockets for a lighter. "How many meals did we eat today? Eight? Nine? I lost track after seven."

"Don't smoke around the babies," Liz scolded, grabbing the cigar away.

Her belly was huge and everyday Abe put his hands on it and told her the babies were fine, healthy and strong and growing. He wanted to help choose the names, he was particular about names, having never been completely reconciled to his own.

It felt so safe in their home, she liked having a home, and of course when Red had talked about lots of land for the kids to play in it had sounded so right. It all sounded so right, it all felt so right, especially after everything they'd been through, those terrible days and hours when she thought he might die.

They had a porch and sometimes the guys sat out there, Red considered Johan a buddy by that time, and the three of them would hang out, Red drinking beer and Abe downing a lemon and kelp and shrimp paste drink of his own concoction, and Johan obviously unable to indulge corporeally at all. Red rabidly approved of the drunken singing he and Abe had done together and he was always pestering Abe to find more songs they could collaborate on, a difficult task as their tastes so wildly diverged. "Girl, you look good when you back that ass up," he sometimes said to her in bed when she wiggled her way into his arms so that he was spooned behind her. "You're a real fine woman when you back that ass up…Damn, I forget the rest of it."

"Call me big daddy when you back that ass up," Liz replied.

He laughed, kissed the back of her neck. "Ain't no woman like the one I got," he crooned into her ear. She took his hand in her own, brought it to her lips. He was, in his way, so unrelentingly cheerful that it was hard for her to keep the angel of death's words in mind. She couldn't believe they were true, she just couldn't. "I hope the kids look like their mum," he muttered, brushing her hair off her cheek.

"I don't. I don't care."

"Bullshit, Liz. Put our baby pictures side by side and it's the lil' angel and the freak show."

"Bullshit, HB. You were adorable. The Professor loved to show off your baby pics and you know it."

That made him sigh. "I wish Father were here."

"I know, Red. I miss him, too." Morbid as it was, she could only hope that Professor Broom knew it would be ok once she returned to the bureau, that before his last moments he had understood she loved HB and would stand beside him. Whenever she remembered HB's tears in the rain on the day of his father's funeral she had to go find him, wherever he was. She would run up to him, well, it was more like waddling at that point, but she would get to him as quickly as she could, throw her arms around him. He would lift her up, hold her suspended above the ground so that their cheeks pressed together. She would whisper, "I love you," and let the flames engulf them.


End file.
